1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to data communications, and, in particular, to a novel system and apparatus for the automatic identification of new media.
2. The Prior Art
Background
Once an audio or video work has been recorded it may be both downloaded by users for play, or broadcast (“streamed”) over the Internet or conventional radio or television broadcast or satellite broadcast media. When works are streamed, they may be listened to or viewed by Internet users in a manner much like traditional radio and television stations. Media streams often contain both performances of pre-recorded work and extemporaneous work, such announcements or other narrative material. Furthermore, media streams may contain no information about the work being performed, or the information provided may be imprecise.
Given the widespread use of streamed media, audio works, or video works may need to be identified. The need for identification of works may arise in a variety of situations. For example, an artist may wish to verify royalty payments or generate their own Arbitron®-like ratings by identifying how often their works are being performed. Thus, playlists of media may need to be generated. Additionally, for competitive analysis a business may wish to know when and where a competitor is placing advertising in the media. Furthermore, a broadcast source may want to know when and how often a competitive broadcast source is using pre-recorded material.
Further complicating the identification are improvements in technology allowing a tremendous number of new works to be produced, such as new song recordings, new advertisements, news worthy audio clips, and station promotions. A comprehensive playlist preferably would include these new works, which may be performed over a wide variety of media streams.
FIG. 1 shows a playlist generation system 100 of the prior art. The system 100 may include one or more remote detection modules 102 deployed at various locations throughout a broadcast area. Each detection module 102 may include an antenna 104 for receiving broadcast signals and providing the signals to an analysis and lookup module 106. The module 106 is typically configured to identify the content of the received signal by comparing its audio content against a database 108 of reference representations of known works.
If a match is made, typically the module 102 will keep a record of all matches made during a predetermined period of time. For example, the module 102 may keep a record of song titles detected during a 24-hour period.
The system 100 may further include a playlist server 110 having a processor 112 and database 114. The server 110 is typically configured to receive information such as the titles of identified songs from the one or more detection modules 102 through a network such as the Internet 109 and generate a playlist which may be stored on database 114.
However, the system 100 is typically unable to identify works for which a corresponding reference representation does not exist in the reference database.